Category: Rambling

Well, tropical cyclone Debbie has now thoroughly degenerated into a low and is wending its way inland to rain itself into oblivion.

My community was spared, in the end. Cyclones being the wild meanderers that they are, at various times Debbie threatened north of us, to hit us square on, then trended south with occasionally unnerving swings north before bringing its full grief to bear on the Whitsundays and Airlie Beach. As it was, the system was large enough that tens of thousands had to be evacuated from low-lying areas of Mackay, and until close to the end Townsville was still expected to have winds equivalent to a category 1 or 2 cyclone.

Ultimately, Townsville was spared even significant gales, and can account ourselves blessed on that score. Best wishes to those who bore the brunt, who are today beginning the long clean up.

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With tropical cyclone Debbie breathing down my neck of the woods, I’m likely to be absent from the blog and other social media for a brief time. Preparing for the possibility of the cyclone making landfall nearby, in downtime reading Enforcing Order by Didier Fassin as essay prep and distraction (I don’t enjoy cyclones one little bit and tend to become rather anxious when they’re hovering nearby). North Queenslanders, let’s hope it all goes well!

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Five day into having committed to make progress on the SF short story, I’d be inclined to report that the outcome has mainly been frustration.

Technically, I’m now four scenes in, but that represents little real progress. It doesn’t count a first scene written before determining where the story should actually start, then discarded. Monday and Tuesday produced the bulk of this week’s new words, 1500 or so. Yesterday was mostly rewrite of those scenes followed by 230 new words (i.e. barely any at all) and today was rewrite of rewrite ending when I ran out of time with no new words.

To be quite honest, I’ve gone quite flat in general. I’ve not been reading apart from material needed for my study, and study itself is proceeding like a crawl over broken glass. I’ve applied self-discipline to honour my various to-do lists, but it’s all quite joyless.

On top of which, it’s frustrating. If I sacrifice writing time for study, and study doesn’t go well, then what’s the point?

And I really do miss lost writing time. I need the practice. In one of his video tutorials on writing, Brandon Sanderson talks about reaching the point where you’re good enough to realize how bad you are (to paraphrase), and I’d say that’s where I’m at. It’s certainly its own kind of frustration. I feel a strong compulsion to improve, to level up past that point, but it’s not going to happen when my practice consists ten words a day wrenched out between other obligations.

Stupid other obligations.

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After a long and tiring day of shoving information into my head and pulling essay out (i.e. today), only an evening curled up with US reality cooking show Top Chef will do. I’m up to season 13, so I’m clearly too committed to deflect by claiming it’s a guilty secret.

Still, I figure I can frame it as sociological. Seriously, those chefs are usually in full impression management mode. “I’m great. My food is great. Game face. Got this. Kick arse…” usually followed by them plating burned slime that makes the judges gag.

And, if I’m making delusional excuses, all that conflict’s gotta be material for characterization.

But if I’m truthful, I’m just a lapsed semi-demi-hemi-foodie who thinks Top Chef comes up with the most cunning challenges of the cooking competitions. Also, I want to spend the night without a single thought in my head…

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Australia’s ongoing heat wave passed by my neck of the woods today. Mercifully, the temperature only made it to 36.5 degrees celsius (though the apparent temperature reached 39.9 degrees, and it felt it).

Yesterday wasn’t much better. It’s the nature of heat waves that they continue for days without much relief at night and, as your basic poor full-time student, air conditioning is not within my budget. The resulting sleepless nights tend to gang up with the oppressive heat of the days to turn your brain to gruel. Basically, you end up like an extra from The Walking Dead, but instead of meaningless repetitive moaning you repetitively moan, “It’s sooo hot.”

Still, trying to write while sleepless did produce the typo of the day, when I realised (roughly the tenth time I re-read the sentence) that I’d typed Miss Garda stood behind a stool-lined dinette strewn with bowels and canisters, wiping her hands on her apron and regarding him through narrowed eyes… Certainly makes the scene more high-stakes than the bowls and canisters I’d meant to write…